Nuclear fuel reprocessing is an overpriced distraction that will slow down nuclear innovation and derail United States’s nuclear leadership if practiced, a former Department of Energy (DOE) official wrote in an opinion piece this week.
In a Monday op-ed piece posted on Nuclear Threat Initiative’s (NTI) website, Ross Matzkin-Bridger, senior director of NTI’s Nuclear Materials Security program, urged the United States to avoid fuel reprocessing at all costs.
Nuclear reprocessing is the chemical process that separates uranium and plutonium from nuclear waste to allow the spent fuel to be recycled or reused as new fuel.
Matzkin-Bridger said that reprocessing is a practice that fails on all fronts as it is expensive, does not produce enough fuel and creates even more highly-radioactive waste.
“Each attempt to revive reprocessing ends the same way: billions of dollars down the drain, technical failures abound, and security risks increase,” Matzkin-Bridger said. “At a time when the world needs clean energy fast, reprocessing would be no more than a costly distraction.”
While France does practice reprocessing, after billions of dollars later, the country is only able to recycle around 1% of its reprocessed spent fuel, Matzkin-Bridger said.
On the other hand, other countries like Japan and the United Kingdom, have made attempts to try out reprocessing but their attempts have not come to fruition yet or have been abandoned for economic reasons, Matzkin-Bridger added.
Economics have plagued the practice of reprocessing, but the concerns of security risks have too, the author said.
Nonproliferation is a key reason the United States should not pursue fuel reprocessing, Matzkin-Bridger said. Reprocessing produces a purified form of plutonium, which can be used in nuclear weapons.
“That’s why U.S. policy has discouraged the spread of reprocessing technology for decades,” Matzkin-Bridger said. “Reversing course now would not only waste money and slow nuclear energy scaling, but also undermine decades of global nonproliferation leadership.”
Recently, many U.S. nuclear companies have shown interest in fuel recycling and reprocessing. Despite that, Matzkin-Bridger said with advanced nuclear technology on the way, the country should reject reprocessing and focus on other types of nuclear innovation.
Matzkin-Bridger previously worked at DOE both during the Barack Obama and Joe Biden administrations. From 2021-2022, he served as a DOE senior advisor for international affairs.